A Life Between the Layers
Some lives are remembered straight through. This one was not. A Life Between the Layers is an autobiographical record assembled from memory, documents, recordings, correspondence and institutional records.
It follows the distance between the life I lived, the life I could remember at different times, the life other people recorded, and the life that became visible when those layers were placed together.
The book does not ask the reader to treat every layer as identical. Memories can be clear, partial or uncertain. Documents can confirm one detail while omitting another. Later understanding can connect experiences that once appeared separate.
The purpose is to preserve those distinctions while leaving a path by which the account can be examined, challenged, corrected and strengthened as further evidence becomes available.
The record can be incomplete and still be truthful.
This is not presented as a final record. It is a record that can continue to develop without surrendering the authority to describe a life to the institutions that previously described it.
